BBC 2 - The Money Programme: The Real Big Brother
BBC 2 television The Money Programme: The Real Big Brother has just been broadcast, but is also available online.
This half hour programme illustrates some, but not all, of the applications of surveillance technologies about which we have been worrtying for years, from CCTV cameras, to the Oyster travel card,, to call centre and warehouse and lorry transport monitoring of employees, to mobile phone tracking with and without the help of GPS satellites, to RFID tags on supermarket shelves and implants under human skin, and beyond.
Chris McDermott from NoTags:
"We are on the cusp of a Privacy Dark Age"
There is a danger that with such a short programme packed full of so many examples of surveillance technologies, each of which deserves a whole programme to itself, to discuss the pros and cons, that this Money Programme will have contributed to the false impression that the use of these technologies is already ubiquitous, and that "they know everything about us already".
This is not yet true, and we can still do something to prevent the balance between business efficiency and "security" from overwhelming our privacy and liberty.